fabulousyarn - 8:17 pm on Mar 4, 2011 (gmt 0)

I think that google is treading very dangerous waters here - I mean, for a buncha people, the web is about shopping. Now, shopping can be either amazon, or it can be a little eboutique. Or in between etsy. Now, I understand that google makes judgement calls about CONTENT in terms of INFORMATIONAL content - ok, yes, I have NEVER found anything of value on Ehow. But to judge ecommerce sites with the same measuring stick means inevitibly that the little guy loses, and in a lot of cases, the little guy (or gal) is what made the web good AND bad. I have had my share of both, but to be left ONLY with AMAZON? I love amazon, don't get me wrong, but sometimes I want to go to a different places/space and buy from something other than a giant shop. Like, for instance, when i buy YARN. Not that I"m taking this personally or anything. But I do think that there is a huge problem now that google has become the gatekeeper - they are just not objective anymore, and neither are their friggin' algorithims. They are doing, in some cases (like mine) Evil. I have turned off adwords. This is my third day. I got slammed by the update, so i juiced up my ad buys on targeted communities. the last 3 days have been fab. So..I will keep kissing g's a** a bit, and also continue to wean myself from dependence. I am also doing SEO for another ecommerce site and I we are just going live with a redesign - I am thankful that this update came out first - we'll be adjusting so that we can live with google, and without it. There is no denying its power, but you have to mitigate it.

Also - did anyone get pummelled in terms of adwords traffic? One of the reasons I turned AW off was because my traffic from AW just VANISHED, too!

Overall, my traffic is down about 7%. For a day or so, sales were too, now they seem to be back. Who the heck knows.